In Search of Refuge: Jews and US Consuls in Nazi Germany 1933–1941 (review)

Readers of Freedom, the newsletter of the New York-based Palestine Resistance Committee, found a rather unusual announcement buried at the bottom of the back page of the August 1947 issue: the committee had "recruited a basketball team that will play at summer resorts for the benefit of the Resistance Fighters," that is, the Jewish underground militias fighting to wrest control of Mandatory Palestine from its British administrators. The team "boasts such outstanding college stars as Lionel Malamed, Vince Verdeschi, Richard Sherman, and the former St. Johns and Columbia ace—Lucio Rossini," the newsletter continues. "All of these stars will donate their time and effort to bring funds and recognition to the fight for Freedom in Palestine." Games were scheduled for a number of the most prominent resort hotels in the Catskills, "including the Harmony Country Club, the Flagler Hotel, Hotel Windsor, and others."

"To our knowledge it is the first time an undertaking of this kind has ever been initiated," the newsletter added. "We think it is significant in its implication that American Youth is behind the Resistance Movement and is willing to sacrifice their time and energy toward aiding the Resistance Fighters." ¹ What motivated non-Jewish celebrities such as Verdeschi and Rossini to associate with a controversial Jewish cause such as the revolt in Palestine? How is it that a mainstream venue of postwar Jewish culture, the Catskills hotel circuit, came to host fund-raisers for groups engaged in violence against British forces, who until a short time before had been America's closest ally in the war against Hitler? And what do these developments tell us about the evolution of American Jewish views of the Palestine situation?

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The Palestine Resistance Committee was established in New York in late 1946 to raise funds for the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Palestine Jewish underground army led by Menachem Begin. The committee's founders came from both factions of the American followers of the late Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. One was the United Zionists-Revisionists of America (UZRA), the official U.S. arm of the international Revisionist Zionist movement. The other, popularly known as the Bergson Group, was led by Irgun Zvai Leumi emissaries who had been sent to the U.S. in 1939-40 by Jabotinsky to solicit funds and political support for the Jewish underground militia. They were led by Hillel Kook, who used the pseudonym Peter Bergson. After the Irgun launched its armed revolt against the British in late 1943, both wings of the Jabotinsky movement in the United States took out newspaper advertisements, held public rallies, and lobbied Congress to explain the revolt to the American public as well as to the American Jewish community.

The Jabotinskyites invoked symbols, images and phrases from America's own history to make Jewish violence in Palestine more comprehensible to American audiences. "It's 1776 in Palestine" was one of their rallying cries. In their literature and public statements, Irgun fighter Dov Gruner was compared to Nathan Hale, a brigade of Americans who volunteered to join the IZL was named the George Washington Legion, and a group that organized boycotts of British goods and services was dubbed the Sons of Liberty Committee, in imitation of the similarly named anti-British boycott activists of Colonial America. ² When critics accused the Jabotinskyites of supporting "Jewish terrorism," they fired back: "Our forefathers started shooting redcoats when the matter of a tea tax was involved. The Hebrews in Palestine have taken a lot more than taxation without representation." The press release concluded by quoting Thomas Jefferson's memorable phrase, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." ³ It was an indication of the extent to which this line of argument was gaining currency in the mainstream Jewish community...